The many comparisons made between the Obama administration's current attempt to reverse the deteriorating situation in Afghanistan to that of the Bush administration's effort to do the same in Iraq in 2007 are often of little utility. But the US military and the Obama administration would be well advised to heed the lessons of the later years of the Bush administration involving the American detention programme in Iraq.

First, stepped-up operations will result in more detainees. Soon after the Bush administration sent an additional 30,000 American combat troops to Iraq beginning in 2007, US-run detention facilities swelled with up to 24,000 detainees – several thousand more than were in the detention system in the months before the troop increase. Similarly, the number of detainees in Iraqi detention facilities grew sharply during that time.

With over 4,000 US Marines and Afghan units streaming into the Taliban heartland of Helmand province, coalition forces will no doubt be detaining and perhaps imprisoning scores of suspected militants. And with the prospect of further US troop increases in Afghanistan by the end of the year not out of the question, more operations similar in size and scope to the one in Helmand are likely. Thus, more detainees are to be expected.

Currently, the US has nearly "15,000 detainees at three dozen overcrowded and often violent sites," according to the New York Times. Building a replacement for the dilapidated detention facility at Bagram air base, the largest US detention facility in Afghanistan, is a good start. But the Obama administration must build more modern and humane sites to house all of the incoming detainees.

Second, building more and larger facilities will be of little utility if minor offenders and reconcilable Afghans are lumped in cells together with violent extremists. Individuals currently being apprehended during operations in southern Afghanistan (truly responsible for attacking coalition troops or committing crimes against Afghan citizens) will be funnelled into overcrowded and arbitrarily-assigned detention facilities unless immediate steps are taken to separate the two types of detainees.

Similar conditions existed in Iraq in 2007 when, "moderate and extremist prisoners were usually mixed, turning the US-run detention facilities into what [have been] called a 'jihadi university.'" While detained, many individuals who may not have been guilty mingled with violent extremists, while those who were guilty developed bomb-making and other skills that made them even more dangerous than they were before.

Third, perhaps the most important development in the later years of the Iraqi detention system was the "creation of administrative boards [that determined] whether a detainee remained an 'imperative security risk' – the legal term used in the UN approval for US forces to detain Iraqis. If a detainee [was] no longer deemed to be a risk, he [could] be released."

While paid work programmes and vocational training in Iraqi prisons were instrumental to improving prisoners' livelihoods once released, these three-member review boards that heard the case of detainees in US custody in Iraq were the "central nervous system" in addressing the justification for their detention in the first place. Moreover, the programme experienced tremendous success. One year after the review programme released over 8,000 detainees from American facilities, only 28 were re-interned.

Ultimately, these changes in the American detention system will have little long-term effect if they are not accompanied by a sweeping overhaul of the Afghan detention and justice systems. Fortunately, it seems the Obama administration has begun to recognise this fact. Moreover, Marine Major General Douglas Stone, credited by some with "successfully revamping American detention practices in Iraq", has recently been assigned to review all detention issues in Afghanistan.

With militants in Afghanistan flaunting a captured American soldier and the commencement of the first major offensive since Obama ordered an additional 21,000 American combat troops and trainers to Afghanistan, the US military's review of the Afghan prison and judicial systems is not likely to receive much fanfare. But fewer initiatives in Afghanistan could be of greater significance.